Sharing developmental feedback
Sharing a negative or developmental feedback is a difficult job for a manager since the question on how an employee will react always remains in the background. Hence, managers often tend to postpone sharing any negative feedback.
Such delays always cause more problems like a) mismatch in expectations by an employee b) missed opportunity to course-correct etc.
4 key factors that managers need to consider while giving a negative feedback:
- Be Objective - Feedback backed by objectivity helps employees to reflect on such feedback with the right frame of mind. Managers should avoid open ended statements like "you should responded immediately.." and refer specific instances of the underlying task, for example, "The email you sent was delayed and the expectation was immediate response from you.."
- Share Purpose - Managers should always state the purpose that they want to see genuine growth and progress of the employee. The intention of sharing feedback is not to unreasonably criticize the employee.
- Take a High Ground - When sharing negative feedback, managers should try to take a higher moral ground by sharing examples of how they too made mistakes in the past, that such feedback is their opinion and how they could be wrong about it.
- Ask for Feedback - It is always a best practice to ask the employee what he or she thinks about the developmental feedback. Listening to employee's side of the story is very important.
